----- The number of unemployed people went down by 188,000 to 8,164,000 ----- Is that reported as newly filed unemployment claims? Even the nightly news will report that many people have decided that standing in line at the unemployment office isn't worth the effort.
All of the comments about the number of employed people correlates well with the new KFC they're building down the road.
----- The average hourly earnings for production workers is at an all-time high of $15.59 per hour ----- Averages are the most easily massaged numbers of all. Every statistician knows that. On a scale as large as the entire population of the US, an average number is marginally useless. An interesting number which would prove my point would be the number of people employed as "production workers" from September 2003 to current.
I for one am sick and tired of watching trolls run people down with blistering accusations of "conspiracy theorist".
In most cases the conspiracy theory more closely approximates the truth than any explanation offered by apologists or trolls. The reason conspiracy theories are so easily gunned down by trolls is that the truth is often much more complex than the system approximated by the theory.
I think ADTi will take the newspaper approach of "just reporting". Every once in a while a newspaper gets tagged for slander but there've got to be some pretty big legal loopholes since it doesn't happen often and usually only when the victim can afford an enormous legal team.
It's pretty tough to take "wordpad" from MS and use it as the editor for "pine" under *nix. It's pretty tough to take "qiv" and use it as the image viewer for a Photoshop clone under Win32. However, if you know ahead of time that you're going to rip off someone else's subsystem, it's pretty easy to write all the proper hooks around it.
Proprietary software companies find it easy to employ people who can identify the hooks and put the pieces together. Good innovative coders who write original code are expensive and in smaller supply than middling coders who can scan code for variables and match variables with functionality. It saves the company the time and money for the actual code development. In this respect I find it very probable that many proprietary software companies have pirated open source software.
----- How does the government separate the junk data from what may actually be worth looking at? ----- They don't. The government approach is "there is no such thing as bad information." Conflicting information is traditionally resolved in a manner which best suits the government. If the conflicting information involves a citizen who is well connected then the information is resolved in favor of the citizen. If the conflicting information involves a citizen who is not well connected then the government has a job tracking someone for another day.
----- We have had 4 straight quarters of record breaking growth ----- Damn those slaves can pull hard when they're whipped heavily enough.
----- and have added 1.2 Million jobs in the past 6 months ----- Yeah, there are Wal-Marts and McDonald's are going up everywhere. I'm still suspicious of how those numbers are generated. If my company trims 5000 people and then hires 250 new people, is that 250 jobs added?
----- Recovering economy, despite the huge collapse that started in OCT 2000 ----- Give it up. Anyone with half a clue was watching the dot com bubble getting thin as early as mid-1999. The rest of the market was feeding off of the assets and volume generated by the artificially inflated technology sector.
----- Homeland safety, despite the onslaught of world terrorism? ----- Give it up. The nightly news has recently become obsessed with every molotov cocktail being thrown by some disgruntled Palestinian. The only difference is that, four years ago, you weren't watching it on the nightly news. Anyone who hasn't been living in their own perfect world knows that there hasn't been an overall increase in world terrorism. Unless you count the US military marching grim-faced through lands which have previously never seen a major occupying military force.
----- A world without Sadam Hussein, despite the UN, who thought it better to leave him in power? ----- Give it up. Saddam Hussein wasn't that bad as dictators go. With any other dictator through history the US has been happy to turn a blind eye, use economic sanctions, or wait for something tangible to happen. Heck. In Colombia the US actually supports the government regime that pulls those types of human rights abuses.
----- Lower taxes, despite all the naysayers who said this would hurt the economy? ----- Give it up. I keep track of how much of my yearly income gets paid out in taxes and government fees on my rent, food, utilities, insurance, investments, etc. Maybe one tax has gone down but, from a total perspective over the course of the year, I'm up to 54.6% this year from 53.5% last year.
----- You need to change your radio station, man! ----- Try listening to more than one. Try listening to different genres. Try listening to something other than "We're number one! Rah! Rah! Rah!"
----- They are purchasing the information from the commercial sector", information that is readily available to anyone willing to pay for it ----- So what's to stop a politician from helping his best friend set up a commerical data collection agency and then feeding his best friend with lucrative government data projects at exorbitant prices in order to funnel enormous amounts of taxpayer dollars to his best friend?
Yes. I _am_ a paranoid conspiracy theorist. Feel free to troll away.
Anybody who would publicize it would probably find seven or eight new collection notices in their mailbox from formerly unknown creditors claiming unpaid debts. It's the ruling class. Mafia style.
----- Political discourse these days isn't about debate, it's about volume, both in terms of quantity and decibel level. ----- Political correctness fostered this. Good proof hurts feelings. Hurt feelings results in witch hunts and lynchings. Since no one wants to be targeted nobody bothers to put together a good argument which exposes the core issues. Anyone who does think deeply enough to expose the core issues is summarily dismissed as a paranoid conspiracy theorist. If that person continues their trend of thinking deeply and exposing core issues then they're mobbed. It all happens because the "stinking liberals" and the "fat cat conservatives" are equally susceptible to having their feelings hurt. Neither side wants to be held up as frauds. They run the dog and pony show and make quite a bit of money off of it.
The US has degenerated into a conglomeration of pyramid schemes and dog and pony shows. The masses are amused and walk through life with happy blinders. Anyone who tries to opt-out of the chicanery is helped to their grave.
I agree that the courts need to begin focusing on intent. However, for the average everyday citizen stopped by the average everyday police officer, intent takes a _far_ back seat to the letter of the law.
Law students in my home town were interested in this phenomenon and decided to interview people who had been ticketed for both disorderly conduct and obstruction of justice. They posted a newspaper advertisement for a study and interviewed people who could produce copies of both tickets written on the same day. They found that, of the 500+ people that they interviewed over a three month period, a full 1/2 had been randomly stopped, either in a moving vehicle or as a pedestrian, by police officers and asked for a search of the car, handbag, backpack, etc. Upon refusing the search the police officers had engaged them in an argumentative dialogue about civil rights. When the citizen would turn to leave or the argument would reach a heated level then the citizen would be detained and ticketed for disorderly conduct and obstruction of justice. The people interviewed who could not afford legal counsel were advised by the public defender to simply plead guilty and pay the tickets. The people interviewed who could afford basic legal counsel ($1000) usually had the tickets dropped. The tickets themselves were worth less than $1000 and the last group of people benefit from not having a misdemeanor record. Of those who paid the tickets greater than 80% reported having difficulty finding a job. Whether this was due to the misdemeanor record of the general level of clientele is an arguable yet valid consideration.
This took place long before the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act only makes it that much more justifiable.
----- Lucky that it has WEP, MAC filtering, and other security measures built in. ----- Congratulations.
My wireless AP has all of these features as well. I still wouldn't trust it as far as I can throw it. That's why it manages the subnet _behind_ the Sid system.
Piss off. You trolls are really starting to be jags. Do you watch my account every day? When was the last time you came up with anything even half as creative.
They could make movies off of my conspiracy plots. What can they do with your negative-attitude rebuttals? Wipe their backsides.
1. Try to support a beta version of Opera and fail 2. Fuel the media hype that there's a "conspiracy" 3. Buy controlling shares in the "abused" company 4. Settle a lawsuit 5. Dump the shares at the price inflated by the hype 6. PROFIT
Duh.
Seriously. Would we as consumers even have any way to know if some MS VPs purchased large chunks of Opera stock, say, a week or two before the settlement? How about if their tee-time friends did?
Even if there were a conspiracy, either to kill the browser or profit from the hype, we'd never be able to prove it.
It's a pretty safe bet that if the user is reading/. they already have a computer. Plug the cable modem into the computer, purchase a wifi NIC, and they're set to supply the internet to anyone who drives by within broadcast distance.
I had thought about doing this but I still needed to buy another wifi NIC for my second system. The choice was $40 for the wifi NIC or $80 for the wireless AP. I currently use the wireless AP as a hub. Certainly iptables can do everything that it can do but it gives me a little extra down-the-road flexibility and, when I get around to plugging the crossover cable into the WAN port, will allow me to play around with another subnet configuration.
_NEVER_, _EVER_, _EVER_, upon pain of lifelong worldly ridicule, should you ever plug a wireless AP directly into your high-speed connection.
If you're setting up the home network for one of those friends that thinks that a cheap beer and some cold chicken is payment enough for cleaning their systems and setting up their home network then, absolutely, plug the high-speed ethernet directly into the wireless AP. Can you imagine trying to tutor them on iptables or even Windows 98 ICS? Heaven forbid their IP or the IP of the DNS servers would ever change. I hear that Win2k/Me ICS is a _little_ better.
----- You can blame me and the other ISP's out there that refuse to accept mail from dynamic ranges, but you should be blaming the spammers for ruining email as we know it ----- Passing the buck. That's all anyone ever does about this problem. Pass the buck.
Who were the first people to start stockpiling and selling e-mail address lists? Admins.
----- Since it is not (according to that quote) profitable to research more printers Dell's printer business will dry up leaving them with just the odd repair or replacement to go on. ----- They can artificially force people to upgrade by rehashing the patents on the printer cartridges.
I'm finding the BC-20 for my Canon BJC-4200 increasingly difficult to find.
----- but that the majority of the people have the power to change the government if they wanted to ----- That's why I called it a troll. I have yet to meet anyone who honestly feels that they have any power to change the government. I spent (wasted?) three years of my time working with grass roots political organizations on local, county, state, and even federal levels. Aside from a token victory on occasion there is no way to break the monopoly of the two major political parties. It's a dog and pony show.
Would political activism work if more people would become involved? Absolutely. This is where the people are powerless. Very few people can afford to take time away from their lives to be politically active because they're too busy paying taxes, fees, bills, and interest which are increasing every year. It's nothing more than an expansion of an old ploy: keeping the farmer busy so that his chickens can be stolen. People can't be everywhere at once and the overwhelmingly wealthy minority, who lead the voting majority through social engineering, know this and laugh about it.
----- Third - I have had a flaw on my credit report. It cost me exactly $0.00 to fix ----- Please, share more information about this. What was the nature of the debt and the entity which levied the claim against you? Either the flaw was minor (less than $500, most likely), pursued by a particularly small and disinterested collection agency, or you are personally affiliated with a lawyer who cares about you, personally. Sending letters to the big three credit reporting agencies saying,"I dispute this claim on my record and demand that it be removed" is commonly met with return letters stating,"We contacted the complainant and the debt has been verified. Pay up." Sending letters to most collection agencies saying,"I feel that this debt is in error" are usually met with return letters of,"It has come to our attention that you owe $THIS_AMOUNT to $THIS_PERSON. Pay up." I'm not saying that it's not possible that you fixed your credit for $0.00. I'm saying that the vast majority of people who suffer credit problems (right, wrong, or indifferent) aren't as lucky.
----- But how is big business responsible for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, prescription drugs, housing credits, etc? ----- Graft and subcontracting. Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, prescription drugs, and housing credits would never have come to pass if there weren't private "not for profit" agencies willing to manage the plans. I shouldn't have to explain that "not for profit" is little more than an exercise in careful bookkeeping. The top-level chairpersons can still be paid very well, avoid corporate taxes, and make their public charity donations by underpaying their employees.
----- So the SCO Trail Of Lawsuits doesn't seem to fit the bill here? ----- The SCO Trail of lawsuits isn't going anywhere. Plenty of large organizations have decided to call their bluff and demand some hard EVIDENCE.
----- No, not that. How about one little thing.... Evidence. Is it so much to ask for? ----- Where am I supposed to get this evidence from? Do you think that they post a public notice in the newspaper? Should I set my VCR to record the private commerical where they say,"All business owners who can afford the $25,000 club fee please show up to the tees on Sunday to discuss the economy, the stock market fallout, the impending public backlash, and whose ass we have to sacrifice to keep the media off our backs!"
It's not any different than the Guatanamo Bay atrocities. Do you think they'll ever find written "EVIDENCE" that the soldiers were following orders?
----- "Conspiracy theory" folks like you ----- Right. Anyone who claims that orders to abuse prisoners is a conspiracy theorist because they can't produce a written order from a major or corporal or general or Dick Cheney which says,"Beat these prisoners and humiliate them." At best there's heresay. Maybe there are some testimonies from some lower guards.
Or, back to the economic scene, maybe there are the testimonies from a few lower investment managers at Strong Funds which resulted in Strong being FINED OUT THE WAZOO and the CEO, Mr. Strong himself, stepping down and agreeing to never be employed in the stock trading industry again.
But, you're right... I'm not going to Google and link to the actual printed material, so you can feel free to keep trolling on forever because I don't have "EVIDENCE".
To begin with... How can you be so naive as to blame the privacy issue on people who blindly give power to their governing officials (as shown by your view that most people want their government to babysit them), yet you steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the concept of graft between big business and big politics? Is the concept of big business and big politics collectively using their muscle to milk the public dry completely alien to you?
You've _GOT_ to be a troll. There's just no other explanation for it.
----- They can go to a supermarket, avoid the "shoppers club card" and pay with cash. No privacy issues. ----- There really are no privacy issues. It's the illusion that giving up privacy creates a better market for the consumer which is the issue. Avoiding the shoppers club card isn't going to improve the real issue.
----- And as for credit cards, just don't use one. ----- Some things are just too convenient to be practical to avoid. I don't feel that anyone is actively tracking my credit cards so I don't feel there is a privacy issue with credit cards. The real issue is in supporting a system of credit reporting agencies which most of us can't afford to challenge if false marks are made on the credit reports. I know people who claim that you can have bad marks removed if those marks are incorrectly placed--and they groan and hold their heads whenever I ask them how much it cost in legal fees. Many of them acknowledge that, if it weren't for the persistent effect of a late payment or collection judgement on the credit score, it would've been cheaper to pay off the false mark. This system has always existed and avoiding the use of credit cards isn't going to stop it.
----- Based on what are they overwhelmingly wealthy? ----- Based on the multi-million dollar campaign contribution type wealthy. Your example of the "soccer-mom demographic" is misguided. That demographic is a demographic of automatons who are easily swayed by the people who are REALLY overwhelmingly wealthy. If the person owns their own business, they don't qualify. If the person can swing a multimillion dollar stock trade in a day without batting an eyelid, they don't qualify. If the person can swing a dozen multimillion dollar stock trades in a day without batting an eyelid, then they might marginally qualify. If the person manages enough money that dumping a significant part of their portfolio would give a dozen SEC investigators a case of diarrhea followed by the issuance of at least twenty court subpoenas to the major brokerage houses within a week, _THEN_ they qualify.
----- By definition, if they're a minority, they can't entirely control politics when politicians are democratically elected. ----- This is a troll. To paraphrase what I wrote,"The minority leads the majority using paid programming." Social engineering is not only the best hacking technique it's also the best political technique. Democracy, other than "might makes right", is the oldest decision making process know to mankind. Methods for rigging a democratic election, therefore, follow by about 5 minutes in history.
----- You've provided no evidence of consumers being the losers. ----- Every year the total percentage of my paycheck that I pay out in taxes and government fees increases. Don't blame me if you don't keep track.
----- talking of the innocent poor/middle class trod on by the rich ----- They are, and there's nothing that can be done about it. It's the way of life. When you learn to accept it you'll quit arguing about "privacy".
----- The consumers who choose to "lose" are the losers. ----- No one chooses to lose. There are people who write the rules. Those who can write the rules never lose. We can't all win. One or two of the rules-writers may get thrown to the public as a token feel-good gesture to keep the majority of people believe that they live in a fair society. It's all a dog and pony show.
----- Yet there is NO EVIDENCE that such meetings or any such collusion ever occurs, and events go on as if nothing like this is happening ----- What, you want a posted public notice in the newspaper? How about a separate commercial on television which says,"Attention, all millionaires are asked to meet at the country club this Sunday to discuss the shape of affairs on the stock market, the economy, and the impending public backlash. Anyone who cannot afford the $25,000 membership fee will be turned away by the guards at the gates and is advised not to bother showing up."
My friends will always complain and moan and complain and moan about their computers being hosed and their connections being slow. One even complained constantly that he couldn't get his new wireless AP to service the whole house, or how he was going to have to run a separate hardline down to the basement so that he could hook up his new Xbox.
Now these are people I've known all my life. One time I discussed, with a third-party friend, the possibility of offering my services for a fee. We both agreed,"Look, if you try to charge them for it not only will they decline, but they'll redouble their computer complaints, everyone will have to listen to it, and you'll be lucky if they offer you a beer next time you're over to watch the football game."
So I cleaned their computers and set up their wireless AP with full WEP and MAC filtering for free. Sure I got a few beers and a chicken dinner out of it but it's still a bit of a kick in the pants. I save them $200 and I get the luxury of watching the football game with them? How about they pay me $200 and get the luxury of watching the football game with me?
Ahhhhhh... to have a house, a big screen TV, and a well-stocked refrigerator. Then people would be jumping to fix _MY_ problems.
Slashdot Mirror
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The number of unemployed people went down by 188,000 to 8,164,000
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Is that reported as newly filed unemployment claims? Even the nightly news will report that many people have decided that standing in line at the unemployment office isn't worth the effort.
All of the comments about the number of employed people correlates well with the new KFC they're building down the road.
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The average hourly earnings for production workers is at an all-time high of $15.59 per hour
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Averages are the most easily massaged numbers of all. Every statistician knows that. On a scale as large as the entire population of the US, an average number is marginally useless. An interesting number which would prove my point would be the number of people employed as "production workers" from September 2003 to current.
I for one am sick and tired of watching trolls run people down with blistering accusations of "conspiracy theorist".
In most cases the conspiracy theory more closely approximates the truth than any explanation offered by apologists or trolls. The reason conspiracy theories are so easily gunned down by trolls is that the truth is often much more complex than the system approximated by the theory.
I think ADTi will take the newspaper approach of "just reporting". Every once in a while a newspaper gets tagged for slander but there've got to be some pretty big legal loopholes since it doesn't happen often and usually only when the victim can afford an enormous legal team.
It's pretty tough to take "wordpad" from MS and use it as the editor for "pine" under *nix. It's pretty tough to take "qiv" and use it as the image viewer for a Photoshop clone under Win32. However, if you know ahead of time that you're going to rip off someone else's subsystem, it's pretty easy to write all the proper hooks around it.
Proprietary software companies find it easy to employ people who can identify the hooks and put the pieces together. Good innovative coders who write original code are expensive and in smaller supply than middling coders who can scan code for variables and match variables with functionality. It saves the company the time and money for the actual code development. In this respect I find it very probable that many proprietary software companies have pirated open source software.
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there were shells found with both mustard and sarin gas
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Over a year after invasion.
That's like giving MS the task of reviewing the code and, a year later, SCO finally producing a specific chunk of copyrighted code which matches.
"Is the ink dry on that?"
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How does the government separate the junk data from what may actually be worth looking at?
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They don't. The government approach is "there is no such thing as bad information." Conflicting information is traditionally resolved in a manner which best suits the government. If the conflicting information involves a citizen who is well connected then the information is resolved in favor of the citizen. If the conflicting information involves a citizen who is not well connected then the government has a job tracking someone for another day.
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We have had 4 straight quarters of record breaking growth
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Damn those slaves can pull hard when they're whipped heavily enough.
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and have added 1.2 Million jobs in the past 6 months
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Yeah, there are Wal-Marts and McDonald's are going up everywhere. I'm still suspicious of how those numbers are generated. If my company trims 5000 people and then hires 250 new people, is that 250 jobs added?
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Recovering economy, despite the huge collapse that started in OCT 2000
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Give it up. Anyone with half a clue was watching the dot com bubble getting thin as early as mid-1999. The rest of the market was feeding off of the assets and volume generated by the artificially inflated technology sector.
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Homeland safety, despite the onslaught of world terrorism?
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Give it up. The nightly news has recently become obsessed with every molotov cocktail being thrown by some disgruntled Palestinian. The only difference is that, four years ago, you weren't watching it on the nightly news. Anyone who hasn't been living in their own perfect world knows that there hasn't been an overall increase in world terrorism. Unless you count the US military marching grim-faced through lands which have previously never seen a major occupying military force.
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A world without Sadam Hussein, despite the UN, who thought it better to leave him in power?
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Give it up. Saddam Hussein wasn't that bad as dictators go. With any other dictator through history the US has been happy to turn a blind eye, use economic sanctions, or wait for something tangible to happen. Heck. In Colombia the US actually supports the government regime that pulls those types of human rights abuses.
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Lower taxes, despite all the naysayers who said this would hurt the economy?
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Give it up. I keep track of how much of my yearly income gets paid out in taxes and government fees on my rent, food, utilities, insurance, investments, etc. Maybe one tax has gone down but, from a total perspective over the course of the year, I'm up to 54.6% this year from 53.5% last year.
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You need to change your radio station, man!
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Try listening to more than one. Try listening to different genres. Try listening to something other than "We're number one! Rah! Rah! Rah!"
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They are purchasing the information from the commercial sector", information that is readily available to anyone willing to pay for it
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So what's to stop a politician from helping his best friend set up a commerical data collection agency and then feeding his best friend with lucrative government data projects at exorbitant prices in order to funnel enormous amounts of taxpayer dollars to his best friend?
Yes. I _am_ a paranoid conspiracy theorist. Feel free to troll away.
Anybody who would publicize it would probably find seven or eight new collection notices in their mailbox from formerly unknown creditors claiming unpaid debts. It's the ruling class. Mafia style.
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Political discourse these days isn't about debate, it's about volume, both in terms of quantity and decibel level.
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Political correctness fostered this. Good proof hurts feelings. Hurt feelings results in witch hunts and lynchings. Since no one wants to be targeted nobody bothers to put together a good argument which exposes the core issues. Anyone who does think deeply enough to expose the core issues is summarily dismissed as a paranoid conspiracy theorist. If that person continues their trend of thinking deeply and exposing core issues then they're mobbed. It all happens because the "stinking liberals" and the "fat cat conservatives" are equally susceptible to having their feelings hurt. Neither side wants to be held up as frauds. They run the dog and pony show and make quite a bit of money off of it.
The US has degenerated into a conglomeration of pyramid schemes and dog and pony shows. The masses are amused and walk through life with happy blinders. Anyone who tries to opt-out of the chicanery is helped to their grave.
I agree that the courts need to begin focusing on intent. However, for the average everyday citizen stopped by the average everyday police officer, intent takes a _far_ back seat to the letter of the law.
Law students in my home town were interested in this phenomenon and decided to interview people who had been ticketed for both disorderly conduct and obstruction of justice. They posted a newspaper advertisement for a study and interviewed people who could produce copies of both tickets written on the same day. They found that, of the 500+ people that they interviewed over a three month period, a full 1/2 had been randomly stopped, either in a moving vehicle or as a pedestrian, by police officers and asked for a search of the car, handbag, backpack, etc. Upon refusing the search the police officers had engaged them in an argumentative dialogue about civil rights. When the citizen would turn to leave or the argument would reach a heated level then the citizen would be detained and ticketed for disorderly conduct and obstruction of justice. The people interviewed who could not afford legal counsel were advised by the public defender to simply plead guilty and pay the tickets. The people interviewed who could afford basic legal counsel ($1000) usually had the tickets dropped. The tickets themselves were worth less than $1000 and the last group of people benefit from not having a misdemeanor record. Of those who paid the tickets greater than 80% reported having difficulty finding a job. Whether this was due to the misdemeanor record of the general level of clientele is an arguable yet valid consideration.
This took place long before the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act only makes it that much more justifiable.
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Lucky that it has WEP, MAC filtering, and other security measures built in.
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Congratulations.
My wireless AP has all of these features as well. I still wouldn't trust it as far as I can throw it. That's why it manages the subnet _behind_ the Sid system.
Piss off. You trolls are really starting to be jags. Do you watch my account every day? When was the last time you came up with anything even half as creative.
They could make movies off of my conspiracy plots. What can they do with your negative-attitude rebuttals? Wipe their backsides.
This is the way of the business world:
1. Try to support a beta version of Opera and fail
2. Fuel the media hype that there's a "conspiracy"
3. Buy controlling shares in the "abused" company
4. Settle a lawsuit
5. Dump the shares at the price inflated by the hype
6. PROFIT
Duh.
Seriously. Would we as consumers even have any way to know if some MS VPs purchased large chunks of Opera stock, say, a week or two before the settlement? How about if their tee-time friends did?
Even if there were a conspiracy, either to kill the browser or profit from the hype, we'd never be able to prove it.
It's a pretty safe bet that if the user is reading /. they already have a computer. Plug the cable modem into the computer, purchase a wifi NIC, and they're set to supply the internet to anyone who drives by within broadcast distance.
I had thought about doing this but I still needed to buy another wifi NIC for my second system. The choice was $40 for the wifi NIC or $80 for the wireless AP. I currently use the wireless AP as a hub. Certainly iptables can do everything that it can do but it gives me a little extra down-the-road flexibility and, when I get around to plugging the crossover cable into the WAN port, will allow me to play around with another subnet configuration.
_NEVER_, _EVER_, _EVER_, upon pain of lifelong worldly ridicule, should you ever plug a wireless AP directly into your high-speed connection.
If you're setting up the home network for one of those friends that thinks that a cheap beer and some cold chicken is payment enough for cleaning their systems and setting up their home network then, absolutely, plug the high-speed ethernet directly into the wireless AP. Can you imagine trying to tutor them on iptables or even Windows 98 ICS? Heaven forbid their IP or the IP of the DNS servers would ever change. I hear that Win2k/Me ICS is a _little_ better.
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You can blame me and the other ISP's out there that refuse to accept mail from dynamic ranges, but you should be blaming the spammers for ruining email as we know it
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Passing the buck. That's all anyone ever does about this problem. Pass the buck.
Who were the first people to start stockpiling and selling e-mail address lists? Admins.
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Since it is not (according to that quote) profitable to research more printers Dell's printer business will dry up leaving them with just the odd repair or replacement to go on.
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They can artificially force people to upgrade by rehashing the patents on the printer cartridges.
I'm finding the BC-20 for my Canon BJC-4200 increasingly difficult to find.
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but that the majority of the people have the power to change the government if they wanted to
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That's why I called it a troll. I have yet to meet anyone who honestly feels that they have any power to change the government. I spent (wasted?) three years of my time working with grass roots political organizations on local, county, state, and even federal levels. Aside from a token victory on occasion there is no way to break the monopoly of the two major political parties. It's a dog and pony show.
Would political activism work if more people would become involved? Absolutely. This is where the people are powerless. Very few people can afford to take time away from their lives to be politically active because they're too busy paying taxes, fees, bills, and interest which are increasing every year. It's nothing more than an expansion of an old ploy: keeping the farmer busy so that his chickens can be stolen. People can't be everywhere at once and the overwhelmingly wealthy minority, who lead the voting majority through social engineering, know this and laugh about it.
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Third - I have had a flaw on my credit report. It cost me exactly $0.00 to fix
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Please, share more information about this. What was the nature of the debt and the entity which levied the claim against you? Either the flaw was minor (less than $500, most likely), pursued by a particularly small and disinterested collection agency, or you are personally affiliated with a lawyer who cares about you, personally. Sending letters to the big three credit reporting agencies saying,"I dispute this claim on my record and demand that it be removed" is commonly met with return letters stating,"We contacted the complainant and the debt has been verified. Pay up." Sending letters to most collection agencies saying,"I feel that this debt is in error" are usually met with return letters of,"It has come to our attention that you owe $THIS_AMOUNT to $THIS_PERSON. Pay up." I'm not saying that it's not possible that you fixed your credit for $0.00. I'm saying that the vast majority of people who suffer credit problems (right, wrong, or indifferent) aren't as lucky.
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But how is big business responsible for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, prescription drugs, housing credits, etc?
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Graft and subcontracting. Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, prescription drugs, and housing credits would never have come to pass if there weren't private "not for profit" agencies willing to manage the plans. I shouldn't have to explain that "not for profit" is little more than an exercise in careful bookkeeping. The top-level chairpersons can still be paid very well, avoid corporate taxes, and make their public charity donations by underpaying their employees.
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So the SCO Trail Of Lawsuits doesn't seem to fit the bill here?
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The SCO Trail of lawsuits isn't going anywhere. Plenty of large organizations have decided to call their bluff and demand some hard EVIDENCE.
How come you don't get the AC trolling you as a "paranoid conspiracy theorist"? I guess they only watch me.
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No, not that. How about one little thing.... Evidence. Is it so much to ask for?
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Where am I supposed to get this evidence from? Do you think that they post a public notice in the newspaper? Should I set my VCR to record the private commerical where they say,"All business owners who can afford the $25,000 club fee please show up to the tees on Sunday to discuss the economy, the stock market fallout, the impending public backlash, and whose ass we have to sacrifice to keep the media off our backs!"
It's not any different than the Guatanamo Bay atrocities. Do you think they'll ever find written "EVIDENCE" that the soldiers were following orders?
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"Conspiracy theory" folks like you
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Right. Anyone who claims that orders to abuse prisoners is a conspiracy theorist because they can't produce a written order from a major or corporal or general or Dick Cheney which says,"Beat these prisoners and humiliate them." At best there's heresay. Maybe there are some testimonies from some lower guards.
Or, back to the economic scene, maybe there are the testimonies from a few lower investment managers at Strong Funds which resulted in Strong being FINED OUT THE WAZOO and the CEO, Mr. Strong himself, stepping down and agreeing to never be employed in the stock trading industry again.
But, you're right... I'm not going to Google and link to the actual printed material, so you can feel free to keep trolling on forever because I don't have "EVIDENCE".
To begin with... How can you be so naive as to blame the privacy issue on people who blindly give power to their governing officials (as shown by your view that most people want their government to babysit them), yet you steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the concept of graft between big business and big politics? Is the concept of big business and big politics collectively using their muscle to milk the public dry completely alien to you?
You've _GOT_ to be a troll. There's just no other explanation for it.
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They can go to a supermarket, avoid the "shoppers club card" and pay with cash. No privacy issues.
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There really are no privacy issues. It's the illusion that giving up privacy creates a better market for the consumer which is the issue. Avoiding the shoppers club card isn't going to improve the real issue.
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And as for credit cards, just don't use one.
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Some things are just too convenient to be practical to avoid. I don't feel that anyone is actively tracking my credit cards so I don't feel there is a privacy issue with credit cards. The real issue is in supporting a system of credit reporting agencies which most of us can't afford to challenge if false marks are made on the credit reports. I know people who claim that you can have bad marks removed if those marks are incorrectly placed--and they groan and hold their heads whenever I ask them how much it cost in legal fees. Many of them acknowledge that, if it weren't for the persistent effect of a late payment or collection judgement on the credit score, it would've been cheaper to pay off the false mark. This system has always existed and avoiding the use of credit cards isn't going to stop it.
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Based on what are they overwhelmingly wealthy?
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Based on the multi-million dollar campaign contribution type wealthy. Your example of the "soccer-mom demographic" is misguided. That demographic is a demographic of automatons who are easily swayed by the people who are REALLY overwhelmingly wealthy. If the person owns their own business, they don't qualify. If the person can swing a multimillion dollar stock trade in a day without batting an eyelid, they don't qualify. If the person can swing a dozen multimillion dollar stock trades in a day without batting an eyelid, then they might marginally qualify. If the person manages enough money that dumping a significant part of their portfolio would give a dozen SEC investigators a case of diarrhea followed by the issuance of at least twenty court subpoenas to the major brokerage houses within a week, _THEN_ they qualify.
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By definition, if they're a minority, they can't entirely control politics when politicians are democratically elected.
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This is a troll. To paraphrase what I wrote,"The minority leads the majority using paid programming." Social engineering is not only the best hacking technique it's also the best political technique. Democracy, other than "might makes right", is the oldest decision making process know to mankind. Methods for rigging a democratic election, therefore, follow by about 5 minutes in history.
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You've provided no evidence of consumers being the losers.
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Every year the total percentage of my paycheck that I pay out in taxes and government fees increases. Don't blame me if you don't keep track.
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talking of the innocent poor/middle class trod on by the rich
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They are, and there's nothing that can be done about it. It's the way of life. When you learn to accept it you'll quit arguing about "privacy".
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The consumers who choose to "lose" are the losers.
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No one chooses to lose. There are people who write the rules. Those who can write the rules never lose. We can't all win. One or two of the rules-writers may get thrown to the public as a token feel-good gesture to keep the majority of people believe that they live in a fair society. It's all a dog and pony show.
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Any fo
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Yet there is NO EVIDENCE that such meetings or any such collusion ever occurs, and events go on as if nothing like this is happening
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What, you want a posted public notice in the newspaper? How about a separate commercial on television which says,"Attention, all millionaires are asked to meet at the country club this Sunday to discuss the shape of affairs on the stock market, the economy, and the impending public backlash. Anyone who cannot afford the $25,000 membership fee will be turned away by the guards at the gates and is advised not to bother showing up."
Puh-leez.
I get the same thing.
My friends will always complain and moan and complain and moan about their computers being hosed and their connections being slow. One even complained constantly that he couldn't get his new wireless AP to service the whole house, or how he was going to have to run a separate hardline down to the basement so that he could hook up his new Xbox.
Now these are people I've known all my life. One time I discussed, with a third-party friend, the possibility of offering my services for a fee. We both agreed,"Look, if you try to charge them for it not only will they decline, but they'll redouble their computer complaints, everyone will have to listen to it, and you'll be lucky if they offer you a beer next time you're over to watch the football game."
So I cleaned their computers and set up their wireless AP with full WEP and MAC filtering for free. Sure I got a few beers and a chicken dinner out of it but it's still a bit of a kick in the pants. I save them $200 and I get the luxury of watching the football game with them? How about they pay me $200 and get the luxury of watching the football game with me?
Ahhhhhh... to have a house, a big screen TV, and a well-stocked refrigerator. Then people would be jumping to fix _MY_ problems.
Yeah right...